Not only can their actions here be understated, the officers shouldn't even be named by their own request. They were just cops doing their job, ma'am.

But no, California isn't that classy. Of course they're all heroes and we should totally forget this is the same state where LAPD officers lit up two unarmed women with more than 100 rounds while looking for one giant black man armed to the teeth and driving a totally different vehicle, taze children and the elderly, steal people's cameras, and mostly sit around and write traffic tickets to meet quotas just because they did their job for once.

doglover:the heroic actions of the officers involved cannot be understated,

Not only can their actions here be understated, the officers shouldn't even be named by their own request. They were just cops doing their job, ma'am.

But no, California isn't that classy. Of course they're all heroes and we should totally forget this is the same state where LAPD officers lit up two unarmed women with more than 100 rounds while looking for one giant black man armed to the teeth and driving a totally different vehicle, taze children and the elderly, steal people's cameras, and mostly sit around and write traffic tickets to meet quotas just because they did their job for once.

So because some officers make mistakes or abuse their power we shouldn't appreciate those that do their job well?

Sure the tractor detail is a bit unusual, but shooting the crazy guy with the gun is what police are supposed to do. Stopping crimes in progress is the only job police have that's worth a damn. They're not heroes for putting down the ticket pad and ceasing their extortion of drivers for 20 minutes to go stop a real crime, they're adequate.

Police had responded to the home once before in 2008 for a mental health call.

As someone with a family member who has been picked up, and ultimately released by police, after she threatened to kill someone and was diagnosed as psychotic with homicidal tendencies, I dread being mentioned in an article like this one someday.

*for the local SWAT team. I wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of the team with that vehicle and their 'military' equipment, but daaaang it would be sweet to see it rolling down the road after the bad guys.

sendtodave:log_jammin: of course it sounds like today's cops to you. You're they type who likes to make up their own definitions to make things fit their beliefs

Wait, are you making the argument that civilian police forces haven't become more militarized?

I gotta hear this.

I gotta hear why you think cops have been trained to fight? A SWAT team is the best of the best the cops have to offer and half the time those morons can't even get the house right when they kick down the door. Marines might not be the sharpest bulbs in the drawer when it comes to things like nuclear physics and microbiology, but they can read a farking map. They're also exclusively trained to combat other armed humans and have a whole boatload of better toys to choose from.

When you compare soldiers to cops, the only similarity is they both have uniforms.

Was it a 'tank'? No. It was an armored car. Robust defense does not automatically mean 120mm smoothbore cannon, or 20mm cannon, TOW missiles, smoke dispersal or the myraid of other weapon and defensive systems found on explicitly military weapons.

Are the police an 'army'? Simple qualities of being uniformed, armed, and trained do not automatically make something a military organization. Legal mandate and practical use of the organization actually 'do' matter.

Unless there's been a vast sea change among law enforcement entities... I'ma guess that these vehicles are the shiny toy broken out once in a blue moon, with day-to-day activities being conducted with the crown-vic, charger, taurus police variants.

doglover:TuteTibiImperes: we shouldn't appreciate those that do their job well?

Sure the tractor detail is a bit unusual, but shooting the crazy guy with the gun is what police are supposed to do. Stopping crimes in progress is the only job police have that's worth a damn. They're not heroes for putting down the ticket pad and ceasing their extortion of drivers for 20 minutes to go stop a real crime, they're adequate.

Because they're expensive and pretty much useless and the LAPD are the last people in the world I'd trust with a pair of scissors that didn't have blunted tips let alone light armor, so even having ONE of these things in the entire state owned by any police department at all is a risk I'm not willing to take. There could be some kind of inter-department vehicle pool or something and the LAPD could eventually lay hands on it then there WILL be a story about abuse.

But aside from that if the cops stopped writing traffic tickets and kicking in the wrong door and shooting innocent people and pets, y'know basically were good cops instead of bad people, then you're right they could totally have one of these because they'd be clearing ganglands and fortified warehouses. As it is, they could make do with a bus with screens over the windows to stop bricks.

No reasons. They should be given anything they ask for. How else would they take out wackjobs on tractors? Just think if they had access to mortars... could've just dropped a couple of those on the guy from half a mile away and ended it even faster.I trust them implicitly.

The more you eat the more you fart:If non-cops are not allowed certain types of weapons/armor systems because they are not military, then the same rule should apply to cops...because they are not military.